Abstract: An induction heating system including a container for storing a substance; a heating element in thermal contact with the substance; a machine readable tag in thermal contact with the substance, the tag having a machine readable temperature-dependant characteristic; an interrogator for reading the temperature-dependant characteristic of the tag and for determining the current temperature of the substance; an induction heater for generating an AC magnetic field to heat the heating element; and a heater controller for controlling operation of the induction heater, in response to the substance temperature determined by the interrogator, to heat the substance.

Abstract: A method of maintaining a thermal history (369; 699) of samples stored in a temperature-controlled sample storage system is provided. The system can include: one or more containers (218, 220; 522) each storing one of the samples; one or more storage objects (210-216, 208; 510, 516-518, 520; 654-660, 662) each housing one or more containers or other storage objects; one or more structures (200-206; 512; 650) defining a temperature-controlled storage environment and housing the one or more storage objects; machine readable tags (14) each of which is associated with a separate container and storage object, each tag encoding an identification code and having a temperature-dependant characteristic; and an interrogator (12) for reading the identification code and the temperature-dependant characteristic.

Abstract: An induction heating system including a container for storing a substance; a heating element in thermal contact with the substance; a machine readable tag in thermal contact with the substance, the tag having a machine readable temperature-dependant characteristic; an interrogator for reading the temperature-dependant characteristic of the tag and for determining the current temperature of the substance; an induction heater for generating an AC magnetic field to heat the heating element; and a heater controller for controlling operation of the induction heater, in response to the substance temperature determined by the interrogator, to heat the substance.

Abstract: A method of maintaining a thermal history (369; 699) of samples stored in a temperature-controlled sample storage system is provided. The system can include: one or more containers (218, 220; 522) each storing one of the samples; one or more storage objects (210-216, 208; 510, 516-518, 520; 654-660, 662) each housing one or more containers or other storage objects; one or more structures (200-206; 512; 650) defining a temperature-controlled storage environment and housing the one or more storage objects; machine readable tags (14) each of which is associated with a separate container and storage object, each tag encoding an identification code and having a temperature-dependant characteristic; and an interrogator (12) for reading the identification code and the temperature-dependant characteristic.